Why vine is a perfect medium for comedy
Two words: Jump cut
In film, the jump cut, or abrupt transition from one frame to the next, functions like a quick, confusing, and incongruous utterance. The viewer is required to fill in the missing rationale or logic, although she doesn't realize it. In humor theory, incongruity theory describes "laughter in response to a perception of incongruity." The jump cut evokes humor, as seen on Vine, the popular short video mobile app with a growing number of aspiring and established comedians.
Because Vine is a short 6-second video platform that allows the user to manipulate time and space by pausing and dragging a scroll bar on a mobile screen, it's the perfect medium to evoke humor through incongruous--or (also conceptualized as) bizarre, queer, inappropriate, odd, discordant, contrasting, "ridiculous" imagery.
The jump cut transition, along with the cutaway is oftentimes a meta comedic device also found in the popular animated sitcom Family Guy.
So there you have it: The medium, in this case, Vine, is the message, humor.
https://vine.co/v/hL9nHAZrt5W
Preview of My Upcoming #RLR2014 Talk
On Monday, October 14th from 6-8pm I'll be presenting at this year's first Racial Literacy Roundtable at Teachers College, Columbia University. I'll be discussing my current research that involves working with court-involved youth in NYC to develop a mobile platform using participatory design and ethnographic methodologies.
Highlights of the talk include:
- An open letter to participants
- An overview of TXT CONNECT
- Definitions and meanings of "court-involved youth"
- Definitions and meanings of participation
- Sharing challenges related to working, designing, and researching in collaborative environments with multiple community stakeholders
- Researcher's reflections
Intended Audience
Anyone working with and learning from young people and underrepresented communities; this could be researchers, educators, any adult in the life of a child/teenager, designers, and mediamakers. I also invite audience members to engage in a reflexive group activity with the hopes of generating meaningful discussions about participation, youth cultures, and civic technology.
Questions?
If you'd like to submit questions for the talk on Monday, please feel free to leave them below in the comments section. I especially welcome questions about issues related to participatory design and working with court-involved youth in New York City.
If you are unable to attend, the talk will be streamed live on Ustream.
Stay in touch using the Racial Literacy Roundtable hashtag #RLR2014 and follow me on Twitter @taralconley
Resources
Pilot Study Bibliography: Participatory Design, CI Youth, & Mobile Tech
The following is an ever growing alphabetized bibliography (you're welcome) of my current doctoral research involving participatory design, court-involved youth, and mobile technology.
Update #2: 4/19/15 - Welcome #AERA15! Feel free to peruse the pilot study bib below. Keep in touch on Twitter @taralconley!
Update #1: 9/25/14 - Welcome #ONA14! Feel free to peruse the bib below. Keep in touch on Twitter @taralconley!
Welcome #RLR2014 participants! Please take a moment to fill out a very brief questionnaire about Monday's presentation. Your feedback is greatly appreciated! Click here to take survey
References
Abu-Lugod, L. (1990). Can there be a feminist ethnography? Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, 5(1), 7-27.
Anzaldúa, G.A. (1987). Borderlands/la frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute.
Anzaldúa, G.A. (2002). now let us shift…the path of conocimiento…inner work, public acts. this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation. In Eds. G.A. Anzaldúa and A. Keating (Eds.), (pp. 540-578). New York, NY: Routledge.
Anzaldúa, G.A. (2002). (Un)natural bridges, (un)safe spaces. this bridge we call home: radical visions for transformation. In Eds. G.A. Anzaldúa and A. Keating (Eds.), (pp. 1-5). New York, NY: Routledge.
Asaro, P.M. (2000). Transforming society by transforming technology: the science and politics of participatory design. Accounting Management and Information Technologies, 10, 257-290.
Bernard, R. (2006). Research methods in anthropology: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Lanham, Maryland: AltaMira Press.
Bohannon, L. (1954). Return to laughter. New York, NY: Harper.
boyd, d. (2008). Friendship. In I. Mizuko, S. Baumer, M. Bittanti, d. boyd, R. Cody, B. Herr, H. A. Horst, P. G. Lange, D. Mahendran, K. Martinez, C.J. Pascoe, D. Perkel, L. Robinson, C. Sims, and L. Tripp. Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Living and Learning with New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Bustamante Navarro, R. (2013). Participatory design Guide for Mental Health Promotion in prisons. Revista española de sanidad penitenciaria, 15(2), 44-53.
Capetillo-Ponce, J. (2006). Exploring Gloria Anzaldúa's methodology in Borderlands/La frontera-the new mestiza. Human Architecture, 4, 87-94.
Center for an Urban Future. (2009). A need for correction: Reforming New York’s juvenile justice system, 18.
Communities United for Policing Reform. (2012). About the Community Safety Act. Retrieved from http://changethenypd.org/about-community-safety-act. Accessed on Aug. 5, 2013.
De Souza e Silva, Adriana. (2006). Interfaces of hybrid spaces. In A.P. Kawoori & N. Arceneaux (Eds.), The cell phone reader: Essays in social transformation (pp. 19-44). New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Dinerstein, J. (2006). Technology and its discontents: On the verge of the posthuman. American Quarterly. 58(3), 569-595. DOI: 10.1353/aq.2006.0056
Faber, J., Bensky, L., & Alpert, L. (2009). The long road home: A study of children stranded in New York City foster care. Children’s Rights. 1-230.
Fitch, D. (2012). Youth in foster care and social media: A framework for developing guidelines. Journal of Technology in Human Services. 30(2), 94-108, DOI: 10.1080/15228835.2012.700854
Flango, V.E. & Sydow, N. (2011). Educational well-being: Court outcome measures for children in foster care. Future Trends in State Courts: A Special Focus on Access to Justice. Report.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: The Continuum International Publishing Group, Inc.
Gailey, C.W. (1998). Feminist methods. In H.R. Bernard (Ed.), Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology (pp. 203-234). Walnut Creek, California: Alta Mira Press.
Goodman, D.J. (2013). Bloomberg vetoes measures for police monitor and lawsuits. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/24/nyregion/bloomberg-vetoes-measures-for-police-monitor-and-lawsuits.html?_r=0. Accessed on Aug. 4, 2013.
Gordon, J. (2006). The cell phone: An artifact of popular culture and a tool of the public space. In A.P. Kawoori & N. Arceneaux (Eds.), The cell phone reader: Essays in social transformation (pp. 45-60). New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, cyborgs and women: The reinvention of nature. New York, NY: Routledge.
Hicks, S., Duran, B., P.H., Wallerstein, N., P.H., Avila, M., P.H., Belone, L., Lucero, J., & Hat, E. W. (2012). Evaluating community-based participatory research to improve community-partnered science and community health. Progress in Community Health Partnerships, 6(3), 289-99.
Holone, H., & Herstad, J. (2013). Three tensions in participatory design for inclusion. Proceedings from CHI 2013: Changing Perspectives. Paris, France.
Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century [White paper]. Retrieved from digitallearning.macfound.org/atf/.../JENKINS_WHITE_PAPER.PDF
Latour, B. (1991). We have never been modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
Lave, J. (1991). Situating learning in communities of practice. In L. Resnick & S. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 63-82). Washington, DC: APA.
Leone, P. & Weinberg, L. (2010). Addressing the unmet educational needs of children and youth in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems. Center for Juvenile Justice Reform. Georgetown University. Report.
Levinson, P. (2004). The little big blender: How the cellphone integrates the digital and the physical, everywhere. In A.P. Kawoori & N. Arceneaux (Eds.), The cell phone reader: Essays in social transformation (pp. 9-18). New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Light, A., and Luckin, R. (2008). Designing for social justice: People, technology, and learning. Futurelab.
Lounsbury, K., Mitchell, K.J., and Finkelhor, D. (2011). The true prevalence of “sexting”. Crimes Against Children Research Center. University of New Hampshire.
Lustria, M.L.A., Kazmer, M.M., Glueckauf, R.L., Hawkins, H.P., Randeree, E., Rosario, I.B., McLaughlin, C., Redmond, S. (2013). Participatory design of a health informatics system for rural health practitioners and disadvantaged women. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(11), 2243-2255.
McAllister, J. (2008). Overcoming system failure to help youth find and sustain positive relationships. Fostering Perspectives, 13(1).
McPherson, T. (2012). U.S. operating systems at mid-century: The intertwining of race and UNIX. In L. Nakamura & P. Chow-White (Eds.), Race after the internet (pp. 21-37). New York, NY: Routledge.
Muller, M. J. & A. Druin. (2002). Participatory design: The third space in HCI. In J. A. Jacko and A. Sears (Eds.), The Human Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications (pp. 1051–1068). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
New York City Family Court. (2010). New York City family court annual report. Report.
NYC.gov. (2013). Mayor Bloomberg signs legislation merging the Department of Juvenile Justice into the Administration for Children’s Services. Retrieved from http://www.nyc.gov/html/acs/html/pr_archives/pr10_12_07.shtml
Peterson, S.B. (2010). Examining the referral stage for mentoring high-risk youth in six different juvenile justice settings. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Report.
Pollock, M., & Amaechi, U. (2013). Texting as a channel for personalized youth support: Participatory design research by city youth and teachers. Learning, Media, and Technology, 32(8), 128-144.
Priest, D. (2013, Aug. 8). Piercing the confusion around NSA’s phone surveillance program. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-08/world/41198127_1_phone-records-phone-surveillance-program-metadata-program
Rainie, L. & Wellman, B. (2012). Networked: The new social operating system. Boston, MA: The MIT Press.
Ringrose, J., Gill, R., Livingstone, S., Harvey, L. (2012). A qualitative study on children, young people, and ‘sexting’. NSPCC.
Ruderman, W. (2013). To stem juvenile robberies, police trail youths before the crime. The New York Times. Accessed on Aug. 4, 2013. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/nyregion/to-stem-juvenile-robberies-police-trail-youths-before-the-crime.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. Accessed on Aug. 4, 2013.
Scheindlin, S.A. (2013) Case 1:08-cv-01034-SAS-HBP Document 373. New York, New York.
Simmel, G. (1903). The metropolis and mental life. The sociology of Georg Simmel, ed. Kurt Wolff.
Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1950), 409-424. Social Services Information Systems (SSIS) (2004). Federal definitions of foster care and related terms. U.S. Government Printing Office.
Spinuzzi, C. (2006). The methodology of participatory design. Technical Communication, 52(2), 163-174.
Stald, G. (2008). Mobile identity: Youth, identity, and mobile communication media. In D. Buckingham (Ed.), Youth, Identity, and Digital Media (pp. 143-164). The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262524834.143
Task Force on Transforming Juvenile Justice (TFTJJ). (2009). Charting a new course: A blueprint for transforming juvenile justice in New York state. Report.
Telerivet. (2012) www.telerivet.com
The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. (2008). Sex and tech: Results from a survey of teens and young adults. Washington, DC.
The New York City Administration for Children’s Services. (May 2013). Flash Report. New York, New York.
The New York City Administration for Children’s Services. (July 2013). Flash Report. New York, New York.
Triantafyllakos, G., Palaigeorgiou, G., & Tsoukalas, I.A. (2010). Fictional characters in participatory design sessions: Introducing the “design alter egos” technique. Interacting with Computers, 22(3) 165-175.
Visweswaran, K. (1994). Defining feminist ethnography. In K. Visweswaran (Ed.), Fictions of Feminist Ethnography (pp. 17-39). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Wheately, M. & Frieze, D. (2006). Using emergence to take social innovations to scale. Margaret Wheately. Retrieved from http://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/emergence.html. Accessed on March 12, 2013.
Winner, L. (1980). Do artifacts have politics? Daedalus, 109(1), 121–136.
Yamauchi, Y. (2012). Participatory design. In T. Ishida (Ed.), Field Informatics (pp. 123-138). Welwyn, United Kingdom: Springer.
Additional References
Cannon, A., Aborn, R., Bennett, J., and Segal, C.P. (2010). Citizens crime commission of New York City: Guide to juvenile justice in New York City. Citizens Crime Commission of New York City, Inc.
Checkoway, B. (2011). What is youth participation? Children and Youth Services Review, 33, 340-345.
Empire State Coalition of Youth and Family Services. (2011). The New York City association of homeless and street-involved youth organizations: State of the city's homeless report.The New York City Association of Homeless and Street-Involved Youth organization.
European-American Collaborative Challenging Whiteness. (2005). Critical humility in transformative learning when self-identity is at stake. Sixth International Transformative Learning Conference, Michigan State University, Oct. 6-9.
General Assembly (1989). Conventions on the rights of the child. Retrieved from http://www.crin.org/docs/resources/treaties/uncrc.asp#Twelve
Lewin, K (1946). Action research and minority problems. The Journal of Social Issues, 2(4), 34-46.
New York State Office of Children and Family Services. (2010). Monitoring and analysis profiles with selected trend data: 2006-2010.
Oakes, J., Rogers, J., & Lipton, M. (2009). Learning power: Organizing for education and justice. John Dewey Lecture. New York: Teachers College Press.
Pateman, C. (1970). Participation and democratic theory. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Rousseau, J.J. (1968). The Social Contract, Cranston, M. (trans), Penguin Books.
Schuler, D. & Namioka, A. (1993). Participatory design: Principles and practices. CRC Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Schultz, K. (2010). After the blackbird whistles: Listening to silences in classrooms. Teachers College Record, 112(11), 2833-2849.
The New York City Administration for Children’s Services. (Sept. 2013). Flash Report. New York, New York.
U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 and 2000 Census Public Law 94-171 Files and 1990 STF1
Walker, A. (2011). When gangs were white: Race, rights, and youth crime in New York City, 1954-1954. Saint Louis University School of Law, 55(1369), 1369-1379).
On intellectual hubris and participatory design #PD #research #justice
The following is an excerpt from an article draft I’m currently working on about participatory design, mobile text messaging service, and court-involved youth:
Engaging in rigorous research is taxing, and if done right, humbling. The researcher not only concerns herself with conducting ethical practices, but she also has to ensure that the work; the calculating numbers and documenting observations in field notes are properly attended to. When the researcher engages in participatory design work; however, she confronts an additional and uncomfortable layer to research logistics: intellectual hubris. Her weaknesses as researcher and an advocate are almost always revealed during the participatory design process. This revelation of ineptitude can be sobering, especially considering that the researcher spends a good portion of her adult life studying in academia; a space that imparts on scholars and researchers a misleading message that the more we do research, the better we will have an understanding about phenomenon, social organization, and cultural emergence. We come to accept the half-truth that we, indeed, are experts, and take with us into the community an aura of academic arrogance. But in order for the process to flourish, and for all participants to contribute effectively to design, the researcher must suspend an expert reasoning that brought her in to the field in the first place. When the researcher goes into the field and engages in work with community members, not just to study on behalf of them, but also with them, she begins to realize that expertise is at its best when scrutinized, distrusted at first, and continually refined by the community she wishes to serve through design.
Excerpt from my current research on #PD #mobile #youth #justice
(Photo by Tara L. Conley)
The following is an excerpt from an article draft I'm currently working on about participatory design, mobile text messaging service, and court-involved youth:
During the summer of 2013 amid a controversial mayoral race in New York City[1], mayor Michael Bloomberg vetoed legislation that, in part, would create an independent inspector general to oversee the New York City Police Department (Goodman; 2013) and would allow for an expansive definition of individual identity categories under the current law. The four bills, together named the Community Safety Act (Communities United for Policing Reform; 2012), were brought forth by City Council as a result of a legal policing practice called Stop-and-Frisk. This policing practice allows New York City police officers to stop, question, and frisk citizens under reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.
While New York City residents were at odds over mayoral candidates and policing practices, young people involved in both foster care and juvenile justice systems were developing and designing a free text messaging service that would support court-involved youth in New York City to access resources and services using their cell phones. Three months before Bloomberg vetoed the Community Safety Act in New York City and while the city’s political sexting [2] scandal garnered national attention, several young people and I were discussing ways mobile technology could be used to help court-involved youth stay connected to their communities. Unaware about the extent to which Stop-and-Frisk and other safety concerns affected young people, I brought forth the idea of a text messaging platform that would primarily function as means of connecting court-involved youth to educational resources such as tutoring services and neighborhood jobs. At the time, the purpose of the platform was to create an intimate and anonymous means for young people involved in both foster care and juvenile justice systems to seek out resources beyond the institutions to which they were bound. Cell phones, I thought, would be the easiest and most comfortable way to facilitate a connection between young people and their communities.
However, the more I talked with young people, the more I understood that connecting to their communities not only meant accessing educational resources, job listings, and intervention services like hotlines, it also meant seeing the mobile device itself as a documentation tool and mobile companion for young people as they navigate the terrain of constant surveillance (Ruderman; 2013) and unstable home lives, all while trying to grasp for themselves a sense of belonging amid a psychological battlefield of metropolis dwelling [3].
Notes
[1] While running for mayor of New York City, former US congressman Anthony Weiner was involved in a national sex scandal, of which he admitted to sending sexually explicit text messages to several young women. Weiner’s indiscretions was the focal point of the NYC mayoral race and national news.
[2] Sexting is a term that describes the act of sending and receiving sexually explicit messages usually over a mobile device. The terms “sex” and “texting” began to appear in survey literature as early as 2008. Shortly thereafter the term “sexting” (a word formed by combining “sex” and “texting”) began to appear widely in academic studies and mainstream media and news (see The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy; 2008; Lounsbury, et. al.; 2011, and Ringrose, et. al., 2012).
[3] Simmel (1903) writes about the ancient polis, or city-state, as it relates to the small town. Both the city and town share an anxiety of “incessant threat” by outsiders, or enemies seen as outsiders. Simmel argues that because of this collective anxiety the environment becomes “an atmosphere of tension in which the weaker were held down and the stronger were impelled to the most passionate type of self-protection” (pg. 16). One might argue that the conditions young people experience in the city, particularly in New York City is symptomatic of an anxiety-ridden atmosphere.
References
Communities United for Policing Reform. (2012). About the Community Safety Act. Accessed on Aug. 5, 2013. Retrieved from http://changethenypd.org/about-community-safety-act
Goodman, D.J. (2013). Bloomberg vetoes measures for police monitor and lawsuits. The New York Times. Accessed on Aug. 4, 2013. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/24/nyregion/bloomberg-vetoes-measures-for-police-monitor-and-lawsuits.html?_r=0
Lounsbury, K., Mitchell, K.J., and Finkelhor, D. (2011). The true prevalence of “sexting”. Crimes Against Children Research Center. https://www.unh.edu/ccrc/pdf/Sexting%20Fact%20Sheet%204_29_11.pdf
Ringrose, J., Gill, R., Livingstone, S., Harvey, L. (2012). A qualitative study on children, young people, and ‘sexting’. NSPCC. http://www.nspcc.org.uk/Inform/resourcesforprofessionals/sexualabuse/sexting-research-report_wdf89269.pdf
Ruderman, W. (2013). To stem juvenile robberies, police trail youths before the crime. The New York Times. Accessed on Aug. 4, 2013. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/04/nyregion/to-stem-juvenile-robberies-police-trail-youths-before-the-crime.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Simmel, G. (1903). “The Metropolis and Mental Life” translated and published in The Sociology of Georg Simmel, ed. Kurt Wolff (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1950), 409-424.
The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. (2008). http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/sextech/pdf/sextech_summary.pdf